(No, I’m not going to talk about The Hug) When I saw this photo on the newspapers this morning, it reminded me of when I was a little girl. Whenever the table manners of my sister and I left anything to be desired (which was often), my mother would chide us by asking how we thought the queen would respond to our disgusting habits. “Would you eat like that if the queen were here?” she’d ask when we switched our fork from hand to hand. “What if the queen came to tea?” she’d say when we buttered and jammed a whole piece of bread in one go, instead of just the part that was about to go into our mouths. And the worst threat of all: “What if you get invited to Buckingham Palace some day? Will you behave like this there?”
I always thought this was just a special little behavioural modification strategy of our family, maybe shared with a few other British ex-pats with a longing for the good order of the home country. But to my great surprise, when I was working my way through the Yarn Harlot’s archive, I found the following quotation (you’ll have to scroll down a fair way through the link I provided, just past the photo of the —erm— sock photographed in front of the monument to Queen Victoria to find the bit Im citing):
The flag was flying, so I know the Queen was home, but I didn’t see her, but I stood there in the rain, thinking about all the times [my grandfather] reminded me of my manners, saying “Careful now, or you’ll never be invited to the palace” and I remembered how as a little girl, I thought that was an entirely possible thing.
So it wasn’t just my mother! Because I thought being invited to the palace was an entirely possible thing for me too. Is this perhaps a broader Canadian phenomenon? I started to wonder.
And then I began to wonder about Americans. Whom do their parents hold up as paragons of good behaviour? Presidents? Somehow I can’t quite picture it (“Eat your broccoli! Ronald Reagan loves broccoli!”), and that difference may explain a lot about a lot of things.
But who knows? I think back to a conversation I had with my son a week or so ago, when I drove him and some of his friends to an academic olympics competition at a school in Englewood. “We’re going to be the only white kids there,” my son said worriedly, though I don’t know exactly what he was worried about. “That’s okay,” I said, “It might be a good experience for you to see what it feels like to be in the minority.”
“Besides,” I continued, “Think of what it must have been like for Barack Obama at Harvard Law School.”
Bonus Joke Content, also from the Yarn Harlot: How do you get 50 drunk and rowdy Canadians to get out of your pool.”
Say, “Would you please get out of my pool?”
Or, I suppose, tell them that the queen is turning up.
I wonder if the Obamas got to see the queen’s corgis?
From the sounds of things, it is impossible to visit the queen *without* tripping over corgis and dorgis in the corridors.
Thanks Luce for reminding me.. John wonders why I break up my toast into 4 pieces and butter and marmalade them separately.. you never know…!!! I loved this posting and the Yarn Harlot !!
You’ll sure have the last laugh when the Queen turns up one morning.
You say “donuts!”
That’s a clever thing to have said, about what Obama must have felt. I’ll have to remember that.
But you have to pronounce it “doughnuts.”
I think I’m late on this thread. But I liked this reflection, because I worry about my manners (which are often imperfect) and those of my children, which are a) miserable, or b) pretty good, depending on one’s perspective (all things being relative.) When I was growing up, we were never tempted with a visit to the queen… but my mother always said: “If you have good manners, you will be comfortable anywhere in the world.” I think that was her version of visiting Buckingham Palace, and I often think of it, because I think it’s true. Manners, of course, being something different from intimate knowledge of ritual. I like the Spanish “educado/a” — brought up.
My grandmother just resorted to insult, most frequently with “only witches put their elbows on the table!” I don’t know why witches would; perhaps they can magically prevent themselves from knocking the table over?
The rest of my manners I learned from my two aunts, who could kill a man with their combined Icy Glare(s) ™ of etiquette judgment.